Air Traffic Control (ATC) and Airline Operational Control (AOC) ground stations continuously communicate with aircraft to monitor and manage air traffic and/or safety of aircraft. In particular, aircraft and ground stations communicate with each other to exchange air traffic data, such data indicative of identification, location and speed of aircraft, weather data, such as graphical weather descriptions, and/or flight safety data, such as engine/aircraft health monitoring data. Aircraft also communicate with each other to exchange collision avoidance information. The collision avoidance information transmitted by a given aircraft can include, for example, data indicative of the identification, location and speed of that aircraft. Data exchanged among aircraft and/or between aircraft and ground stations allows flight crews and air traffic service providers to monitor in real time information that is relevant for managing the operations and safety of aircraft.
Many aircraft and ground stations may employ very high frequency (VHF) communications as a standard technology to communicate with each other. In particular, certain aircraft and ground stations use VHF Datalink Mode 2 (VDLM2) technology for sending and/or receiving data. Communication systems based on VDLM2 use a Differentially encoded 8-Phase Shift Keying (D8PSK) modulation scheme and provide a plurality of 25 kHz communication channels. Each of the communication channels has a maximum bit rate equal to 31.5 kilo bits per second (kbps).
New air traffic management (ATM) applications proposed for Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) next generation air transportation system (NextGen) and European Aviation and Safety Agency (EASA) Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR), such as four-dimensional (4D) trajectories, uplinked weather, system wide information management (SWIM), etc., are driving the need for continuously connected aircraft with links capable of exchanging more data. For instance, the 4D trajectory concept integrates time into 3D aircraft trajectory information and involves the exchange of current and predicted positions of an aircraft. Also, the uplinked weather application involves ground stations transmitting extensive weather information (e.g., covering hundreds of square miles) to aircraft. The SWIM program provides an information-sharing platform allowing aircraft, ground stations and other entities to access to real-time, relevant aeronautical, flight, and weather information.
Considering the amount of data transfer associated with the new ATM applications, VDLM2 does not provide sufficient data rate to support these applications. Specifically, the exchange of 4D trajectory data, uplinked weather data, SWIM data and/or data associated with other air transportation applications calls for aeronautical data links with higher bit rates than the data rate provided by existing VDLM2 communication channels. Existing aircraft and/or ground station communications infrastructure are not designed to support high data rate communications.